Microsoft and Adobe beef up cloud tools with ‘strategic partnership’

26 Sep 2016

Microsoft and Adobe have partnered up for better cloud capabilities. Image: Shutterstock

Microsoft has teamed up with Adobe to boost its cloud capabilities, citing improved Microsoft Azure, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365 on the back of the partnership.

With a combined armoury that can bring “the most advanced marketing capabilities on the most powerful and intelligent cloud”, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has lauded his company’s move to tie in Adobe to a strategic partnership.

“Business leaders in every industry are focused on how to better engage their digital customers, wherever they are,” he said, with digital transformation pinned down as the key service that Microsoft plan to provide better options for.

Microsoft Adobe

As part of the deal, Adobe will make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform across several of its services, meaning Photoshop and Illustrator will be supported by Azure.

In return, Microsoft is making Adobe Marketing Cloud its preferred marketing service for its Dynamics 365 enterprise solution.

Dynamics is an area that Microsoft has been playing significant attention to in recent times, with the surprise $26bn purchase of LinkedIn closely related to this particular platform.

“Think about it: how people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done, and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world,” said Nadella at the time of the acquisition.

“It requires a vibrant network that brings together a professional’s information in LinkedIn’s public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics.”

The price stood out as particularly extreme at the time, though this latest partnership with Adobe shows Microsoft has a serious focus when it comes to Dynamics, and beefing it up is the aim for 2016.

“Customers today expect a well-designed, personalised and consistent experience every time they engage with a brand,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe.

“We will bring together the cloud horsepower and end-to-end capabilities [that] brands need to design and deliver great digital experiences.”

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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